


Interesting People You Meet In Prison

by igrockspock



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Backstory, Banter, F/M, First Meetings, Flirting, Mission Fic, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Snark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:41:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27673505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/igrockspock/pseuds/igrockspock
Summary: Newly single and freshly resigned from the Senate, Leia sets off to acquire a weapons cache for her new paramilitary.  It doesn’t go as planned.
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Leia Organa
Comments: 18
Kudos: 43
Collections: Star Wars Rare Pairs 2020





	Interesting People You Meet In Prison

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nununununu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nununununu/gifts).



> Hi Nununununu! (Is that the right number of Nu's? I hope so!) When I saw "interesting people you meet in prison" in your likes list, I just couldn't resist. Thank you for the chance to explore such a fun idea!

Getting arrested for buying stolen weapons from an undercover cop was not the finest day of Leia’s life, and that was really saying something, because she’d had a lot of spectacularly bad days.

On the plus side, Kijimi was so far off the radar, she doubted it would make the news.

On the minus side, she was still thinking like a woman who had a political career, when actually she was a woman who’d set her political career on fire. That’s what happens when you resign from the Senate so you can build a paramilitary. Leia was pretty sure the galaxy thought of her as a slightly classier version of a wounded veteran ranting by the side of the road. The late night hosts had _not_ been kind about her resignation speech. The worst part was, they were right. She could forgive herself for anything but incompetence, and getting arrested while buying stolen blasters was the absolute height of stupidity.

Thank the maker that Han couldn’t see her now. At least she’d learned not to think of herself as a married woman. _That_ had been over a long time ago, even if neither one of them had the ovaries to admit it until Ben had --

She stifled the thought, biting down on her tongue as if she were about to speak the words aloud. She would get him back, or she would get revenge. That was that.

Resting her head against a cleanish patch of wall, she breathed in deeply -- well, as deeply as she dared, considering the miasma emanating from whatever passed as a ‘fresher in the corner of the cell. Really, her day could only go up from here.

“I’d be careful what I touched, if I were you,” a voice said from the upper bunk.

Leia stiffened and reassessed her prospects for the day. A cellmate. She hadn’t even _thought_ to check if she was alone. She really was out of practice. At least she still had a shiv hidden in her hair. 

“Thanks for the advice,” Leia said, pulling her head back from the wall reluctantly. Dirt or no, she really would’ve liked to bang her head against it.

A head full of wavy black hair appeared over the top of the mattress. “What are you in here for?” he asked, squinting at her in the dim light. “Doesn’t look like drunk and disorderly.”

Leia snorted. “Illegal arms trading.”

Her cellmate whistled appreciatively and swung himself down from the bunk. As cellmates went, Leia supposed she could’ve done worse. He had the usual number of limbs, and he wasn’t so large that she couldn’t take him in a fight. And she had to admit, the mussed hair and stubble was not an unattractive combination. 

“How about you?” she asked. She supposed it was normal prison small talk, though her extensive protocol training had never prepared her for such a conversation.

He shrugged. “Sometimes you gotta eat the bust and fight the charges.”

“A smuggler, then.”

“I’ve been known to move cargo discreetly. Sometimes even unlicensed pharmaceuticals,” he said, waggling his eyebrows at Leia. “Borrowed weapons wouldn’t be out of the question.”

“Obviously you weren’t very discreet if you landed here,” Leia said. “Do you make a lot of business deals in jail?”

“Even I get boarded sometimes,” he said, unruffled by the sharpness of her tone. “And I wouldn’t say I make a _lot_ of deals in jail, but it is a good place to meet disreputable people.”

“I’ll take that under advisement,” Leia said. It was only half-sarcastic. Although she’d activated a cadre of old friends from the Rebellion, she didn’t have much of a recruitment plan for rank and file members. And she _was_ going to need smugglers. Probably a lot of them.

“I’m guessing you’re either a very inexperienced arms trader or a truly excellent one, because it seems like you’re not used to the whole arrest routine.”

Leia snorted. “How about we say I’m rusty? But I’m sure it’s just like riding a hoverbike, right? You never really forget.”

He leaned back against the wall, eying her up. “I’m sure _you_ never forgot, Leia. Or should I say Senator Organa?”

“I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage, mister…?” she said, refusing to be ruffled by the mention of her name.

He flashed her a white-toothed grin. “Dameron. Poe Dameron.”

“Kes Dameron and Shara Bey’s son?” Leia blinked against an odd rush of emotion. Knowing that Shara’s son was old enough to be grown made her feel old, and seeing that he was _just_ a smuggler made her terribly jealous. If Ben were just selling spice somewhere, she would’ve known how to get him back. Or hell, she could’ve joined him. All of that was overlaid by embarrassment at ogling her old friend’s son. 

Poe grimaced. “If this is about to be a lecture about how disappointed my mother would be…”

“I’m sure she’d be quite disappointed with me too,” Leia said, looking around the grimy cell. How, exactly, had her life come to this?

And more importantly, why had she stayed here even this long?

“Is anyone coming for you?” she asked, scanning the bars carefully for weaknesses.

Poe snorted. “I was sleeping with the boss, and it ended badly. So if I had to guess, no.”

Probing with the Force, Leia found the locking mechanism for the cell. “Well then, could I interest you in a prison break?”

Poe raised his eyebrows. “You got a weapon I can’t see?”

Leia wrangled the shiv out from under her braids. “This,” she said. “And morally ambiguous uses of the Force.”

“Sounds shady,” Poe said. “I’m in.”

Leia explored the lock with her mind. It was computer controlled, of course. Even Kijimi wasn’t _that_ backward. But all those chips and wires controlled a very physical lock, and all she had to do was move the right pieces aside. Of course, lock picking by Force was not the sort of activity Luke had ever encouraged, and really, this kind of delicate work was _his_ forte, not hers.

At the thought of him, her fists clenched involuntarily. He’d _left_. As if she could endure losing her brother and son on the same day, as if she could clean up both their messes all by herself. And of course she _could_ endure, and she _would_ succeed, but she didn’t _wanted_ to, not all alone anyway. 

Anger rippled through her, and with the anger came power. Heat surged through the lock interface outside the cell. Leia pushed harder, and soon the heat became fire, and the interface exploded with a loud crack and flew off the wall.

Poe took a step back without taking his eyes off her. “What the hell was that?”

“The dark side of the Force,” Leia said. “It really makes things more efficient sometimes.”

“Yeah, I can see that.” Poe began to walk through the now-opened bars, but Leia thrust out an arm to stop him. He shot her another sideways glance. “Are we not, you know, escaping?”

“Patience,” Leia murmured, flattening herself along the wall next to the bars. “When they come to investigate, we take them out and take their uniforms. And then we go talk to the commander.”

Eyes still wide, Poe did as he was told. “And then what?” he asked.

Leia smiled. “I tell him nicely that he made a mistake when he arrested us both.”

***

Thirty minutes later, Leia emerged from the prison to the gray skies of Kijimi. The mind trick had come back to her easily, and the commander had folded more quickly than she’d expected, deleting their arrest records with profuse apologies. She felt pleased, and also vaguely dirty.

Poe looked mildly awed. “Walk you back to the space port?” he asked.

“Oh, I’m not leaving.” Not until the job was done.

Poe glanced around the grimy alley behind the prison. “You looking for a new summer home? _Here_?”

She turned to face him. “No, I’m looking for a weapons cache.” She scanned the blank gray facade of the police station. “I’m assuming it’s somewhere in the evidence room, though it’s possible they’re storing it offsite.”

“Did you consider that it doesn’t exist?” Poe asked slowly, like he was explaining it to a five-year-old.

Leia rolled her eyes. “I saw it before I handed over the credits. I’m not _that_ rusty.”

“Sounds like you should just walk in there and ask for it with whatever Force juju thing you just did.” He waved his hands vaguely. “Handy trick, by the way.”

Dark tendrils of power caressed Leia’s mind. It would be easy, so easy, to take what she wanted. Take Ben back, or go to him. _If a dark empire is what you want, let’s kill your friend Snoke and build one together._ She forced her eyes up to the Kijimi’s pale gray sun and thought of the stars beyond it, where Alderaan once lay. She would _not_ become what was done to her; she would rise above it and be worthy of the father who raised her, not the twin of the one who sired her. That decision was made long ago.

She looked at Poe coolly. “Do you think _you_ could pull me back from the dark side?” she asked.

He looked her up and down appreciatively. “Probably not. It’s kinda hot, to be honest.”

 _Shit._ Was this how it started? One minor use of the dark side and she already had an acolyte?

“Trust me, it wouldn’t be attractive for long,” Leia forced herself to say. “Getting someone to hand over five thousand blasters requires a little more force than confusing them about arrest paperwork, and I’d like to keep my soul. Which means some old-fashioned theft. You in?”

Poe whistled appreciatively. “Stealing _five thousand_ blasters from the police? Now that’s gonna cost you.”

“Well, I have no money,” Leia said matter-of-factly, even though the thought made her stomach drop. Financial security was the one kind of security she’d known her whole life, but she’d liquidated her assets to fund the new Resistance. 

Poe winced. “No money, no deal.”

Still, he lingered at the mouth of the alleyway. Leia surveyed his clothing. There were grease marks on his trousers, and his boots looked to be Navy surplus. Well cared for, but hardly flashy.

“You’re not in this for the money. You’re in it for the flying. That, I can give you.” She set off for the cantina down the road. With one last glance over her shoulder, she added, “And I would definitely sleep with you.”

Poe’s eyes went wide. “You’re prostituting yourself for guns now? To save your soul from the dark side of the Force?”

“No prostitution here,” Leia said, taking in Poe’s rumpled hair and stubble with an appreciative eye. “I fully intend to enjoy myself. I’m just informing you that I happen to find weapons theft very attractive.”

She resumed her walk toward the cantina, not bothering to look back. The crunch of Poe’s boots on the cracked sidewalk told her he was following along. Sure enough, he slid into the seat across from her as soon as she settled into a booth at the back of the bar.

“I’m not doing this to sleep with you,” he said. “But I’m not _not_ doing this to sleep with you. You follow?”

Leia nodded. “You have nothing to do and nowhere to go.”

“Brutal. I respect that.” He held up a finger. “For the record, I have nowhere I’m _choosing_ to go, and I’m _always_ up for an adventure.”

He waggled his eyebrows at her, and Leia realized with mild horror that she couldn’t justifiably roll her eyes at him. _She’d_ started it, after all. She felt wild and unmoored, but possibly not in a _bad_ way. Maybe the late night hosts were right, and she’d just been waiting all these years for an excuse to go back to war. And if she slept with attractive younger men along the way? Well, nothing wrong with having a little more fun this time around.

Poe leaned across the table, narrowing his eyes. “What kind of flying are we talking about?”

Leia leaned toward him, pitching her voice low. “I have X-wings. A lot of them.”

Poe closed his eyes, inhaled, and swallowed slowly. If Leia hadn’t known better, she would’ve thought he was getting a blow job under the table.

“And you’re telling me that if I help you steal these blasters, you’d put me in the cockpit?”

Leia extended her pinkie toward him. “It’s a promise.”

Poe’s skin was warm and calloused as he linked his finger with hers. “Great. Because I have a way better idea than stealing from the police.”

***

Leia was pretty sure her mother had told her not to crawl into sewers with strange men who promised you weapons, but when Poe said his boss had a secret underground weapons cache, she just said, “I’m in.”

They came back to his apartment for supplies, slipping in through a window to avoid observation. Once inside, he jerked his head toward the bed with a ridiculous eyebrow wiggle, but Leia shook her head.

“I sleep with men _after_ they get results,” she said, summoning her very best princess voice.

“Fair.” Poe grinned and tossed her a blaster. “I’ll be sure to get results then.”

Leia looked down at the weapon in her hands. “Modified for automatic firing, I see. Are we expecting things to get interesting?”

“I’d say that’s a possibility, yeah.”

“It usually is, when stealing from one’s ex.”

Poe smirked. “I have a valid claim to at least partial ownership.”

Leia clipped the blaster into her holster, ready to follow Poe back out the window. But she paused with one foot on the sill. She should go, she knew. No questions, no debate. The Resistance needed these guns, and whatever happened to Poe --

No. She wouldn’t think that way. She wouldn’t _use_ people.

“Poe? Are you sure you want to torpedo your life here for the chance to sit in an X-wing?”

Poe was already standing on a flat patch of the roof, and he turned to face her. “Any X-wing? No. An X-wing fighting against the First Order? Yeah.”

Leia closed her eyes against the flood of relief washing through her. Her friends had come -- some of them, anyway -- but she hadn’t expected this faith from a total stranger, however much she’d longed for it.

He took a step closer. “You know, there used to be kids on the streets here? Beggars. Urchins. Whatever. But they’re _gone_. They started disappearing as soon as the first Order ship showed up in the sky. That’s worth fighting against.”

Leia nodded. “Lead the way.”

And she dropped into the sewer tunnel behind him.

***

Something rumbled in the distance. Leia strained her ears toward the sound and thought she heard a faint rustling, as if some faraway creature were slithering over the stones.

“Is it possible that something lives down here?” she asked, trying -- and failing -- to fight down a shudder. 

“Are we talking possible or probable?” Poe shot back, keeping his voice low.

Leia sighed. “What is it?”

“Well.” Even in the dim light, Leia could see he looked uncomfortable. “Nobody’s sure, exactly. You know how the Empire was, always putting weird creatures in possible escape routes.”

This time Leia didn’t even try to suppress the shudder. The garbage compactor on the Death Star, the mynocks on the _Falcon_ , the worm that had swallowed them… _Creatures_ were not her strong suit. Give her a battalion of storm troopers any day.

“You’re not afraid, right?” Poe asked.

“At least sixty percent revolted,” Leia said, still thinking of the mynock’s leathery wings brushing past her face. She decided not to inspect how the other forty percent of her felt.

She jogged up to Poe, who’d been walking a few paces in front of her. “So, shall we review the plan?”

“You mean our half-baked scheme to steal a bunch of blasters before my ex comes back with a buyer?” Poe asked. Even in the dim light of their torches, Leia could see the dimple on his cheek.

“Oh, it’s not even half-baked,” Leia said. “A quarter at best.”

“And that’s the way you like it.”

Leia shook her head. “Say it in public, and I’ll deny it.”

“You plan to take me out in public?”

Heat rushed to Leia’s cheeks when she pictured showing up on D’Qar with an arrest record, cases of stolen blasters, and an attractive young rogue in tow. It was, she had to admit, fairly on brand, even if she’d spent the last twenty years trying to deny it.

The rustling came again, closer this time. Poe pressed a finger to his lips and took his next step with exaggerated care, planting his boot silently on the slick stone floor. Leia followed suit, although a warning sounded in the back of her brain. Whatever lived down here in the dark probably navigated by smell.

Poe jerked his head toward a bend in the path, and Leia let out a slow sigh of relief. Just a few more meters, and they’d be climbing toward the warehouse, leaving behind whatever the Empire had left in the sewers. 

Together they turned the corner. _What a fantastic smell you’ve discovered,_ Leia thought, just as an exhalation far too loud to be Poe reverberated through the narrow corridor. The torch caught on two enormous milky eyes. She turned back the way they came, but Poe threw out his arm and shook his head.

“They must be breeding down here,” he whispered.

Leia courageously decided not to look, but she cast out her mind and felt a large presence in front of them, and another one behind. 

_Kill them._ Dark tendrils wrapped around her mind again. _Kill them and be done with it._ She had the power. She could feel breath rushing through their lungs, hearts pounding in their chests. How _easy_ it would be just to squeeze -- especially now, as she heard their bellies scraping along the stones, claws skittering in their wake. Them or her. 

_No._ She was Leia Organa, the daughter of Breha and Bail, a leader of the Rebellion, and the founder of the Resistance. She would not become the thing she stood against.

She forced her breathing to calm and reached toward their minds. Their hunger reverberated through her. They’d been down here so long, no food, nothing to hunt. _Slow_ , she told them. _Slow or you’ll frighten the prey._

The skittering slowed but did not stop. Now they were close, hot breath sliding over her skin.

 _Kill them._ Maybe it wasn’t even the voice of the dark side. Maybe it was just common sense.

 _No._ She knew other ways, better ways. When Ben was small, too young for words, she had learned how to put him to sleep. She could do that to these monsters too. Centering herself, she reached toward their minds again, gentle but firm. She thought of peace and calm, forcing it through herself and into them. _Toes relaxing_ , she thought, imagining her own joints slowly releasing. Their claws, once poised to strike, hovered uncertainly in the air. Encouraged, she worked her way slowly upward, knees to...whatever strange joints connected the creatures’ segmented, slithering bodies.

When they collapsed into a heap on the ground, she grabbed Poe by the wrist and ran through the passage toward -- well, probably not safety. Toward whatever hopefully less voracious obstacle next lay in their path.

***

The path led them up a ladder, which in turn led them through a trap door into a ‘fresher that had seen better days. Leia flung herself against the wall, breathing deeply, hardly caring as the dueling scents of ammonia and cheap air freshener stung her nose.

“I hate --” she said through gritted teeth, but she didn’t even know how to finish. “Whatever they are!” She threw her hands up in frustration.

“You and me both.” Poe looked steadier than she felt, but she was pleased to see his olive skin looked pale too. “You looked like you were in some kind of trance back there.”

“Something like that.” She pushed herself away from the wall reluctantly. There was a mission; complicated explanations of the Force could wait. She thought she’d be tired -- it had been years since she’d used the Force so much -- but instead she felt lighter, freer. The dark shadows that had hovered at the periphery of her consciousness since Ben turned had finally receded. 

Leia knew she shouldn’t feel glee at the sight of blasters, or any other weapon, for that matter. Even so, joy bubbled up in her heart as soon as she stepped out of the ‘fresher and beheld the rows of neatly stacked cases, each filled with blasters nestled in padded foam. She traced her finger across the rough patches on the trigger guards and smiled. The serial numbers had already been filed off.

“Hey, you can ogle these all you want _after_ we get them on the ship, alright?” Poe slid an anti-grav sled toward her, and Leia slammed the case shut with one last longing look.

“How long till the crew gets back?”

Poe shook his head. “They were out looking for a buyer when I got picked up. Could be any time.”

He jerked his head toward the waiting bank of anti-grav sleds, clearly set up in anticipation of moving the cargo quickly. Their time was short.

***

They’d just finished loading the sleds when voices approached in the tunnel below.

“Are those things actually _asleep_ down there?” one of them asked.

A smooth female voice replied, “Don’t look a gift orbak in the mouth.”

Leia froze on the steps leading to the rooftop. Only a few more minutes, and they would’ve had the blasters on the landing pad, and her ship flying toward them. But they were too late. The trap door creaked open, and rapid steps traversed the length of the fresher.

“We’ve got five thousand blasters, Republic Navy issue, serial numbers removed,” the smooth female voice continued, clearly speaking to a customer.

Maybe Leia could hold her off somehow, put her to sleep like she had the monsters below. She reached out, but her mental probe bounced off the woman’s mind as if it were surrounded by a wall of obsidian; her will was strong, too strong to break without descending into the darkness.

Poe yanked the rooftop hatch open, and Leia shoved the first sled through it just as the footsteps rounded the corner.

She caught a glimpse of a slender woman wearing a helmet before the first blaster bolt sizzled through the air.

“You’re _stealing_ from me, Dameron?” the woman’s voice rang out.

“Well, Zorii, maybe if you hadn’t left me in the lockup for a week --”

“You mean if you hadn’t gotten yourself _in_ the lockup in the first place --”

“And if you’d paid me what you owed me for this job, but no, you had to lie about the cargo so you could keep a bigger cut for yourself --”

Poe, to his credit, kept shoving the antigrav sleds through the hatch while Leia kept up cover fire. Her clip was already half empty, and the second she paused to reload… well, the thought didn’t bear completing. What she needed was a distraction.

A _monstrous_ distraction. She cast her mind into the tunnel below and thought _DINNER_ as hard as she could.

Something rumbled below, followed by a skittering. “Behind you!” Leia shouted, because she didn’t actually want anyone to be _eaten_ tonight, just distracted long enough for a getaway. The oncoming fire halted as the crew turned back toward the ‘fresher in horror.

Poe yanked her through the hatch onto the roof, and she used her last shot to blow out the door controls, trapping Poe’s former boss and her crew in the warehouse below.

“Here.” She shoved her ship’s remote toward Poe, gesturing toward the auto-summon feature with her thumb. Then she closed her eyes and sank back into the Force, putting the creatures back to sleep before they had a chance for a snack.

***

When the stars stretched out into long blue streaks, Leia found two glasses and a bottle and joined Poe in the lounge. She took a small liberty, sitting close enough that their hips nearly brushed together, but he didn’t move away. He shifted slightly so they were pressed together, her leg resting against the hard line of his thigh.

“You can’t go back there,” she said, letting their hands brush as she passed him a drink.

“Not if I like my balls attached to my body, that’s for sure.” Poe offered her the one-sided smirk she’d started to think of as his signature, but his voice sounded ragged.

“That escalated quickly,” Leia said, licking her lips. “A little jail cell fliration and suddenly here you are, giving up your whole life.”

“Egotistical much?” Poe asked, nudging her in the ribs.

Heat crept across Leia’s cheekbones. “I didn’t mean --”

“I know.” Poe shook his head, his grin reaching his eyes this time. “I didn’t wake up this morning thinking I was going to set my life on fire, but I didn’t do it for you. I did it for _her_.”

He pulled something small and shiny from his pocket and lay it on the table in front of them. 

“A cross of glory.” Leia stared down at the medal, its immaculate ribbon and carefully polished surface contrasting with Poe’s grease-stained clothing. “Your mother’s?”

Poe nodded, taking a long swallow of his drink. “I like doing crime. I really do. But I always promised myself -- promised _her_ \-- that if the opportunity to do something better came, I’d take it. I didn’t know the call was coming today, but I don’t want to wait to see how bad it gets before I start fighting back.”

Leia nodded and raised her glass. “To new beginnings for both of us.”

Poe waggled his eyebrows toward the open door to her cabin, where a slice of the bed was just visible from the couch where they were sitting. “I’ll drink to that.”


End file.
